


Signs of a Cross

by orange_8_hands



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Catholic Character, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Suicide, POV Second Person, Road Trips, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:52:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain America is a hero, and we all know heroes never -</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signs of a Cross

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently Steve is supposed to be Protestant, but I headcanon him Catholic (& thank you [Catholic site](http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14326b.htm)) so *handwave* ... actually, let's just say *handwave* to a lot of facts...dates...really this was just written because he'll jump on the grenade but sometimes sacrifice looks like the wrong word and I got curious about it.
> 
> TW: suicide, religion & suicide, canon levels of mind wiping 
> 
> Spoilers: Cap America, Avengers, Iron Man 3 canon vaguely mentioned, trailer & leaked scene from Cap America 2/Winter Soldier comic canon

 

You wake up.

         ***

You wake up and there's a baseball game, _just an absolutely gorgeous day here at Ebbets Field_ , and when you lift your body up there's a woman, who looks too much like Peggy, and it's not what you thought so there's your anger. It's probably not Hydra but it's definitely nothing good, and then there's New York City, looking off in ways being gone from home for two years couldn't do.

  
You wake up, and a man who moves like a soldier and looks like a leader tells you _it's been seventy years_ , and you don't know what else there is, really, that can be added to that.  You believe because it's as good an explanation as any, and better than the first two you had. He asks, _you gonna be okay?_ He says, and later you'll appreciate just how fucking stupid this question is, _you gonna be okay?_

  
And you say, _yeah. Yeah, just...I had a date._

         ***

You wake up, and it ain't Heaven, and it ain't Hydra, and now Bucky's been dead seventy years and five months, instead of just two weeks.

  
You never paid attention, cause it didn't mean shit to you, you're the guy who stood up to bigger and stronger when the rest of the world laughed, or pretended not to notice, or didn't even care. You're the guy who said _hey_ , in the rows of a movie theater and walking down streets and in the corner store and by the time you got to the alley way they already noticed you but sometimes you still said _hey_ , and so you didn't _pay attention_. Wasn't applicable, was all, because when have you ever backed down from a fight?

Father Fitzpatrick, you remember, the wood pews digging into your bones, knowing too many men escaping any way they could from the shame of not feeding their family's bellies, he looked out and said, _It is contradictory to the laws of nature, for a human being to do anything but preserve his life. It is contradictory to the love you have for the living God. You have a moral obligation to preserve your life, and you face a moral culpability for not doing everything in your power for not doing so._

         ***

Six days after you wake up and you're on a flying ship. There's a woman pretending not to watch you and a man who tried to do what you did, and failed. Howard's son is using the word hero and another man keeps thinking you are one. There's someone who has a brother who looks like he knows exactly what's going on, and you remember the last time someone called a man a God.

  
You collect the vintage cards, frown down at the blood. Then you go fight some aliens.

         ***

You sleep about four hours a day, though that's a generous term for both what you do and how long you do it for.

  
For the most part you move without direction on your bike. Half the time you find some field far enough away from the road and stare at the stars until you think you've tried long enough. Once you wake up to a goat, and it makes you smile, makes you remember Gabe's face when it happened to him and Dum Dum's belly laugh and the feel of French air at dawn.

  
They have motels by the hour and you take showers too fast because that's how life trained you, too poor for hot water and a soldier the rest of the time. It reminds you of the girls, actually, smirking at you the first time you all had eggs and you told them about just standing under the spray and grinning. May just topped off your coffee and mentioned what else showers were good for, and you hid your face in your hands as Becky Anne hooted louder than any soldier ever could.

  
You spend your time in diners, and museums the size of two rooms in towns not much bigger, and libraries, where a woman named Theresa doesn't say anything about recognizing you when you ask her to show you the ropes around the Internet. You buy books from the little stores inside libraries and give them away just as fast as you read them.

  
You come across a church, and break halfway through confession, choking because you can ask for forgiveness for killing people - it's war and you aren't naive, even if it was more vengeance than righteousness those last few weeks of it - but how do you explain what you did when you can't even say his name?

  
There's a ninety-four year old friend you finally manage to call, and it's a good conversation, and it's a lie, because either she isn't saying or she never actually knew just what your decision was really about.

  
_I still can't dance_ , you tell her, and she sighs, murmurs _Steve_ , tells you _I can't be the one to teach you anymore_.

  
She's lived every one of those seventy years, and promises you pictures, and tells you stories.

  
_Captain America: Back as Our Hero_ , one of the headlines says, and she's so much braver than you are.

         ***

You stop by the Tower for dinner on your way back to SHIELD. You meet Miss Potts, and Col. Rhodes, and see Stark and Banner again. You pull Stark aside to offer him apologies, for what you said on the ship, for not being there when he went missing, and he says, _you're gonna give me hives stop talking_.

  
At one point Banner says _only in a mirrorverse_ , and Stark turns, delighted, and there's a conversation about a crew and a Captain and an alternate universe. _It's a TV show_ , Miss Potts tells you softly, then pauses as if trying to remember if TVs are something common in your time. You nod and she gives you the bare bones of a summary, and then the conversation moves on, and when you leave she kisses you gently on the cheek to Stark's mock outrage.

  
It's dark already, and it would be easy to put off SHIELD another day. They're watching you, but it's enough of a distance so you only know because you know them, and the idea of Phase Two still burns as you point your bike in the right direction.

         ***

You wake up, and it ain't Heaven, and it ain't Hydra, and now Bucky's been dead seventy years and seven months, instead of just seven weeks.

  
You find a gym. You find a track. You live in an apartment and sketch pictures of people who have been dead too many years. You go to work. You eat, and still aren't used to the feel of being full. You wander around a city you've never been to before.

  
You meet a man named Sam Wilson and he laughs when you pull out an actual notepad and write down some of the references he makes. He promises you music, and he gives you an external hard drive to borrow, full of downloads to add to your music library.

  
You run with Sam. You still hit punching bags too hard, and you still sleep like it's a punishment. You get lasagna too much and fall in love with the taste of fresh fish. You draw landscapes and monuments and people walking hand in hand in the park.

  
Natasha picks you up one day, hair cut short, and tells you to get your butt in the car. You wave to Sam and watch them nod at each other, casually friendly, and you realize they're both friends in the way the chorus girls were, and the art students and the people from the neighborhood, living in a city that's not New York and only sometimes like a war.

You wake up, every day, and it ain't Heaven, and it ain't Hydra, but you're starting to think it may not be Hell either, for all that's supposed to be where you go.

         ***

There's a man running across the rooftop and you throw your shield, and it's a shock when he turns and catches it, because you've only seen one other guy do that.

  
Then you look at his eyes, and they look like hatred, and hidden behind an awful haircut anyway, and there's too many scars, and it's been somewhere between seventy years and eleven months and twenty-three weeks but either way he's dead, and you don't deserve miracles, and yet still you -

         ***

Your best friend sits at your shoulder. He's been tortured. He still looks at your new body like it's a punch line to a joke he wasn't expecting. He's more healed than you want any of the doctor's reporting. He's a sharpshooter and a soldier and exhausted.

  
_So what about you?_ you ask him. _You ready to follow Captain America into the jowls of death?_

  
And it's not until you're back in the bar, bombed out and trying to swallow the sickness inside of you with more liquor, that you realize he resents you, has always resented you just a little, because every time you stand up for what's right his knuckles get as bloody as your face.

_It wasn't your fault_ , Peggy says to you, but the truth is he's never let you walk into a fight without him, and you've never backed away from one because he asked you to.

  
_The torments of the damned_ , Father Daly told you, first week after your ma died and boys were twice your size and ten times meaner, _shall last forever and ever_.

  
Your best friend, rescued POW, sharpshooter and soldier, swallows his drink and says, _That little guy from Brooklyn. I'm following him._

  
         *** 

\- you say, _Bucky_ , and wonder which of you is cursed.


End file.
